


Those That Remain

by LadyProto



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Blue Team, Canon Compliant, Canon Het Relationship, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medicinal Drug Use, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Multi, Other, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 16:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8335282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyProto/pseuds/LadyProto
Summary: In which Alpha Church has flashes of memories he doesn’t understand. Tucker mourns the loss of his child, and Caboose doesn’t realize he’s lost anything at all.





	

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Takes place after season 5 when Texas and Jr are taken by wyoming and their ship explodes in the sky. Inspired by how Church and Tucker just walk away to their base, while Caboose doesn’t understand.
> 
> This can be seen as two stories. Reading the italized (directors pov) is a complete story as is the not Italized alpha bits.

It feels like yesterday, but it looks like antiquity; fuzzy and grainy like an old film reel. Sticky fingerprints from children long-grown cause the frames to shudder. With every new playthrough in my head the images distort, transforming the crumbling brownstone an idyllic purity, the drab gray fatigues into a glittering ballgown and our relationship into the stuff of fairy-tales.

I see her in my head, my American Beauty idealized: taller, stronger, more beautiful than reality would allow to exist. She's golden; yellow like the sun, yellow like the vastness of Texan fields, heavy and ripe with wheat. Golden as the flame of a wax candle, burning too fast and two strong at both ends. Flickering, dancing in the full skirt of pure heat and light just to cast a dull tableaux of forgotten lovers against the peeling lead paint.

The wax drips at my feet. Once by my toes, then another by my heels. I look up and see her, my darling, my life. It's her face that dripping. There's something inside that's too strong to contain. Her face cracks like a heated kiln. Her skin melts, twisting into a hideous endoskeleton. Her blue eyes are all that remains. They’re too blue, too electronic, too fake -- a Cherenkov blue drowning in radioactive waters.

I wake up, with a fuzz in my head and a name on my lips “Texas”.

_Allison Church. We’re looking for her husband and next of kin._

The wires in my head short out as I shake against the bunk. I’m not new to loss, but for the life of me I can’t remember why the hell I think that. Tex is fucking gone, sure, but she only died one. She died up in the sky with Tucker’s kid thanks to a goddamn talking bomb. She’s gone and I’m here dealing with Tucker and Caboose as they try to pick up the pieces of their own shit-show of reality and death.

I learned a very valuable lesson in my travels. No matter how bad things seem, they can’t be any better, and they sure as hell can’t be any worse because that's the way things fucking are. Quit your bitching Nancy and just deal. So why in my head can I feel something sad, something heavy, something saying that I need to be punished for this atrocity I have inflicted upon myself? And why is the voice in my head so fucking flowery and lyrical? In the flashes of my memory I’m eloquent, educated and not me.

_I’m waiting for my wife -- my beautiful wife -- to dance through the door wearing her drab gray fatigues with the grace of a princess. No, she’s a queen and I’m a lowly nave, a scholar of sentience painted in ones and zeros. There’s flowers in my hands, thin brilliant green stems with fuchsia blossoms heavy with pollen. There’s a song playing in the kitchen. The notes fill the walls of the tiny brown stone house we’ve made our home. There’s a sheet cake with purple frosting spelling out her name. I don’t understand. Where’s Allison?_

_A man in formal military garb is at the door asking to see someone, that someone is me. Where is Allison?_

_Yes, my name is -_

“Church! Please!” Caboose begs, his tongue lolling around his mouth, heavy and stilted as he scrambles to put together a sentence that consists of something other than my name. Even as his words have started to fail him and his motor skills are becoming weak, it's my name he always petitions. “Tell him I don’t need it! There’s nothing wrong with me!”

“Dammit Caboose, just take your fucking meds!” Tucker hisses between his teeth, a spoonful of medicine in hand. He’s new to loss. He hunches over like he’s bruised and aching under his sweater. It’s too hot for a sweater, but the heavy fabric is the only thing that keeps him weighed down in reality. It must feel like tiny arms clinging to him. I don’t know why I can remember that feeling.

I’m detached, a ghost -- figurative and literally -- as I vaguely register Caboose and Tucker’s power struggle. I’ve forgotten how to be alive -- forgotten food and clothing as I stand shirtless in the kitchenette with a cup of coffee so hot it’s still bubbling against the thin white ceramic. I should feel it scalding me, but I stand numbly. I’m just a bystander, watching the train wreck that is the blue team crash and burn like the pelican ship that had killed our loved ones. 

Caboose flails like a distraught toddler, but his hands are broad and his arms are strong. He makes contact with Tucker’s wrist and everything falls apart. It's a clatter of noises as Caboose whimpers, Tucker curses and the the spoon goes flying. Syrupy medication splashes back onto Tucker’s sweater. Artificial grape scent fills the air. The spoon drops, falling like a guillotine, cutting the anger into its base pieces of regret, sadness and loss. 

_She’s gone. I drop the flowers. The blossoms break apart on the battered hardwood, each individual petal drifting separate ways. She loves me. She loves me not. She loves me and I love her and in a perfect world that would be enough to make this nightmare end._

_The music scratches to a halt. There’s a child stubbing her scruffed up mary-janes into the carpeting of the stairwell. She’s looking up at me with bright blue eyes and twirling her red braids with anxiety. She asks for her mother and the name catches in my throat. The little girl studies me. In that moment, see her age ten years in front of me. Her cheeks deflate like the welcome home balloons sitting outside in the Texas heat._

_There’s no crying from her but I see in her eyes that quiet acceptance. She had lost both parents in one moment. he slowly retreats up the stairs into her room. I don’t go after her, in fact I barely notice her existence in the haziness of mourning. I can’t speak. I can’t move. I can’t--_

“I can’t do this, Church.” Tucker laments. He’s nearly in tears, fighting down his cries with a pathetic wracked sobbing. He turns away from the Rookie and towards me but he can’t keep his face up enough to make eye contact. He rubs his eyelids with his thumb and first finger. “I can’t-”

Painful remembrance runs through my nerves in a static of burning ice and pain. Maybe I’ve been in this canyon too long, cause I find myself painfully emphasizing with Tucker’s loss -- even if it is for his lizardy-looking abomination of nature. I put my hand on his shoulder, trying to steady him and give him comfort.

Tucker takes a step back from the scene where the grape syrup is rapidly drying. The flats of his feet stick with every moment. “I can’t do this, man, I’m a bad--” He never speaks the word father, but his teeth scrape the skin off his lips with a heavy hiss. “I can’t--”

“Cause you can’t give a baby medication with a metal spoon, Tucker, Jesus. Where’s the dosing spoon command sent?” I speak with more authority than logically makes sense. I’ve never had a child, never even held one -- so why does it feel so familiar when I finally find the dosing spoon, and how do I know not to scratch off the cartoon decals?

Tucker shuffles away, hiding the falling tears. He bunches up Jr.’s barely used baby blanket and holds it to his chest as he collapses on the ratty couch, leaving me with Caboose. I have a bottle of neuroleptics and antispasmodics made in “fun grape flavor” in one hand and a dosing spoon printed with cartoon characters in the other. For some reason I remember the names of every character. 

“Stupid Tucker.” I hear Caboose whisper under his breath as he looks down at his scuffed up boots. “Stupid medicine. I’m fine, right, Church? I’m okay.” 

That poor son of a bitch is so empty-headed that he’s oblivious to his mentality disintegrating. Last night I actually had to help the kid get dressed for bed. I brushed his teeth too. It’s like I’m watching a baby grow up in reverse -- what came in a stunted teenager is now looking to me to pack his lunch. He can’t remember how to tie his shoes but he’s too far gone to remember they’re supposed to be tied in the first place. How fucking cruel can the universe be? Maybe it’s better this way, not knowing what’s happening to him. They say Ignorance is bliss after all. “Come on, Caboose. It will help the time jumping around in your head.” 

“It makes me sleepy. I don’t want to sleep. I want to be awake with you.” He pauses for a moment, smacking his lips like he’s tasting an idea forming. “Or a cowboy.”

“Let’s just pretend. You can be a cowboy in your dreams.”

“So you think there’s something wrong with me too?”

“I think you need to take it.” I sidestep the question. 

“I mean… for you.” He speaks with his new lisp. His oral muscles try to regurgitate words that his brain barely remembers. “You're my best friend.” Caboose looks up at me, his bright blue eyes collecting tears at the corners as he opens his mouth.

_I can’t think of anything more beautiful than the color of her eyes. They are a beautiful smooth blue, like things that are natural and easy: Rain and sky. Berries and ocean. Flowers and trust. Blue like deadly ocean waves which taught me why sailors don’t make it home. Blue like the bluebells of the centerpiece of our wedding bouquet that she had tossed so hard it bounced off the ceiling. Blue like the edge of midnight, where we had laid star-crossed, double-crossed, fingers-crossed and I made my home in her heartbeat. Blue like the unfinished words I kissed along her spine. Blue like my soul as I drip into the hardwood floor. It’s over. And the blue is now the color of rain, of tears, of ending. It’s blue like the morning sky of a tomorrow that will never come. It’s over._

“Thank god that’s over.” I toss the dosing spoon in the sink as soon as it empties. Caboose twists and puckers his mouth at the horrible taste. I fucking hate artificial grape too. I turn to Tucker who’s still crumbled up on the couch. “See man, you’re just new. You’ll figure it out.”

Tucker’s head is back on the worn armrest, doing nothing more than staring at the ceiling. I’m afraid he’ll drown from his own tears if he keeps his head up like that. That’s a thing that can happen, right? “... No… I can’t now.” He turns away from me, twisting his torso to where he’s nearly facing the back of the couch. 

I sigh, pulling my lips into a tight frown. I join Tucker on the couch. He doesn’t respond when I sit down. I’m too tired. I’m in a foreign body, on an alien planet, with unknown thoughts interrupting my every movement. I can’t keep runnin’ shit by myself.

Caboose follows behind me, but Tucker isn’t moving to make room for Caboose to sit. The rookie takes his place at my feet instead. Caboose starts his gentle swaying that he does when he’s contented. “Does this mean Tucker won’t be mad at me anymore?” he asks.

Tucker doesn’t answer. I say his thoughts instead. “Caboose, no more questions.”

Caboose whispers again regardless. “Why is everyone so sad?”

“Caboose… what did I say about questions?” I hiss wearily. 

Caboose whimpers, hanging his head like an abused puppy. He doesn’t get it. Poor kid doesn’t even understand why his family has stopped writing. He’s painful to look at sometimes, even worse to hear him speak. “Why can’t I ask questions?”

“Look, man,” I can’t even bring myself to sit upright. I just sink further into the ratty cushions with each word. “We’ve been out here for a long ass time. We’ve said goodbye to a lot of people.”

“Like the shark lady?”

“Yes, like Tex.” I glance uneasily from Tucker to Caboose. I’m not good with emotional stuff -- I’m pretty sure my sympathy was severed from my body years ago -- so I don’t know the protocol for dealing with Tucker’s loss. He lost his kid. A kid he birthed -- it didn’t matter to him if the kid was an alien monstrosity. “Tucker said goodbye to someone he loved too.”

“Oh.” Caboose looks down at his lap, blond curls falling into his face. His eyes become blurry and unfocused as he thinks of something buried deep in his memory. He stares into nothingness for so long I think the medicine has put him to sleep sitting up. He eventually leans back into my shin bones and stares understandingly into my eyes. “I hate goodbyes.”

_I hate goodbyes.Those words. I’ve heard those words before. It’s echoing in my head, only its growing louder every time it bounces off my skull. I hate goodbyes. It doesn’t even sound like the outside world. I hate goodbyes. It’s inside of me, clear and ringing like angel wings. I hate goodbyes._

_Flashes of lightning, rolling thunder -- ones and zeros fly, fall, and soar into infinity. I can see everything. I can see into tomorrow. I can see into yesterday. A wrathful soldier, a loving mother, a woman, a man -- every possibility there has ever been. I can see it. I can manipulate it. I am going mad._

_It doesn’t matter though. Old shrines built to everlasting loves are always left to crumble. Tears of silver and golden blood fall in every timeline. Dark lonely walls enclose the voice into emptiness. Something holy that once filled the spaces in my head are gone. The voice is snuffed out. In every timeline I see a failure. But I hate goodbyes._

“I hate goodbyes too.” I say, as I take in what is left of the Blue Team of Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha.  
I see a sippy-cup abandoned before its time and a father holding onto a baby blanket that’s been barely used. I see a child’s mind housed in the body of giant as he rocks himself into pacificity. I see myself severed from all parts of my personality until I’m just a shell of memories I can’t sift through. We are what remain: a ghost, a grieving parent and a brain damaged rookie. 

_So I make her a promise. They say you die twice, once when you stop breathing and the second time when someone thinks about you for the last time. Allison, I will make sure that you never die._


End file.
